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The Divine Name: An Interview with Jonathan Goldman

Taking a full deep breath, I immersed myself in the merging and weaving notes resonating from a spinning CD, but in truth, they came from a realm of far more holy origin. The companion to the book, The Divine Name: The Sound That Can Change the World, it was created by sound healer Jonathan Goldman. This CD takes the listener through a step-by-step process that he encourages to allow "profound changes and shifts" to occur even in the silence between the chanting sounds. It was as if I was literally taking a sonic shower as one by one, each chakra was being given voice. Goldman offers, "Together they create a step by step process of vibrational activation using sacred sound."

Offered by Grammy nominee Goldman, who is the director of The Sound Healers Association and president of Spirit Music, The Divine Name is the fifth he has penned. The others are The 7 Secrets of Sound Healing, Healing Sounds, Shifting Frequencies and Tantra of Sound.

This book, according to one reader is "Moses coming down from the mountain, important." With characteristic humor and humility, Goldman shared that he "cracked up" laughing about the comment. It truly is a message whose time has come.

Wisdom:

Can you please lay the ground work and explain what sound healing is?

Jonathan:

Let me give you the basic premise of how sound can heal and transform. This comes from our ancient spiritual teachers and also our quantum scientists these days. If you examine the spiritual texts of the various traditions, they talk about life, the universe and everything beginning with sound. In the Old Testament we are told: "And the Lord said: ‘Let there be light’," with sound actually creating light, and in St. John, from the New Testament it is written: "In the beginning was the Word." From the Vedic text of India, it says: "In the beginning was Brahman with whom was the vibration and the vibration was Brahman." The scientists call this "The Big Bang". Everything is in a state of vibration, from the electron moving around the nucleus of an atom to planets in distant galaxies moving around their suns; they are all in a state of vibration. If they are creating a vibration, they are potentially creating a sound and this includes every part of our body. When we are in a state of health, we say we are in ‘sound health’. We are akin to an orchestra that is playing this universal suite of the self. What happens if the second violin player begins to lose their sheet music? They play the wrong notes and melody and pretty soon the entire string section is sounding off and pretty soon, the entire orchestra sounds off. This is very much as if a part of our body is vibrating out of its normal resonant frequency. We say that it is vibrating out of ease and we call it dis-eased. What if we could restore back to the string players, who have lost their sheet music, the correct sheet music for them, and project the correct resonant frequency to that part of their body that was vibrating out of harmony, to a level of health? It is a principle of many other vibrational therapies, including chiropractic, homeopathy and naturopathy. A sound healer is someone who uses vibrations to restore balance and health to the physical, emotional and spiritual bodies.

Wisdom:

Why do you think now is the time for your book? What shift has occurred that will allow people to be receptive to the messages in the book?

Jonathan:

Beautiful question. Let’s briefly define The Divine Name. It is the universal sound composed entirely of vowels, that sounds striking like the lost, forgotten, personal name of the Divine Creator Being, in the essence of the original Old Testament, which is the foundation of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. From my perspective, it is this ultimate sound of the Divine. This sound has been lost for more than two millennium. I was given this discovery about fifteen years ago and it wasn’t until the last few years that I have been teaching and have written this book about it. We are in such an extraordinary time of shift and change, of planetary turmoil, that it is mandatory that we have a tool that can help us reach our next level of quantum evolution. I believe it is through the Divine Name, which is not only a universal sound, but it is also a sound that has extraordinary abilities in terms of shifting and changing our consciousness, putting us into a state of balance and harmony and what could be called Divine. It allows us the possibility of working together in groups to co-create a consensus reality; interfacing with the consciousness of the planet.

Wisdom:

What is the reality that you perceive occurring? Where do you feel we are now and where do you feel that using the concepts in the book can take us?

Jonathan:

We are at a crossroads in our evolutionary development. There have been very few people who disagree that there have been challenges ahead for us, whether it is global warming, pestilence, famine or war. These situations have existed for a long time. Now, however we have the technology where we can do a whole lot of damage to ourselves and this planet if we’re not conscious. We need to come to some great awakening on a global level. This great awakening encompasses us working in cooperation together and with compassion as opposed to competition and greed. The idea of awakening may be the key to the continued evolution on this planet. We are all one.

Wisdom:

This sound that you talk about in The Divine Name - how will the use of it make a difference for the reader and the entire planet?

Jonathan:

I want to tell you how I first discovered this sound. I discovered it the same way that many different people have made important discoveries, including James Watson who won a Nobel Prize for discovering DNA. The way he got the idea for that was through a dream he had about interlacing spiral staircases. For myself, I had been working with the use of sound as a healing modality for about fifteen years and I had been working with sound to resonate the chakras, the energy centers in the body. I had specifically been using vowel sounds in a particular order. I can basically teach this technique of chakra resonance to anybody and regardless of their belief system or their spiritual background, they can feel the energy. It is that real and that powerful. I had been going through steps 1-7 chakras, but as I woke from this dream, I was told to go from the 7th chakra, sound it down to the 1st and then sound it back up again. I had become so indoctrinated in going from 1-7, that I literally had to write it down and then I sounded it. Two things happened. The first thing that happened was that I felt the vibrations move from the top of my head down to the base of my spine and then back up to the top of my head. It didn’t surprise me because I had worked with sound for 15 years. What did surprise me was that as I made this sound, I heard very distinctly, the sacred, ancient name of the Divine that is called the Tetragrammaton, a Greek word which means the "four letter name of God" because it is made of four Hebrew letters; yod, hey, vav, hey. I thought: "Wow, this is amazing. And it’s really sacred and really important!" I simply didn’t know what to do with it except to share it with elevated students of mine, as well as my wife, to see what they would think about it. They had the same experience as me and then gradually, I hooked up with Gregg Braden, a well known writer, spiritual scientist and teacher, and he invited me to a workshop he was doing in Denver on a book he had written called The God Code. The book was basically about the Tetragrammaton. I told Gregg: "I made this discovery ten years before that and I have never shared it with anybody, but I would like to make this recording with you so that as you discuss the power of this sacred name and the implications of how it is actually encoded in our DNA, they can hear this sound." The response was so overwhelming that I began to teach people in conjunction with Gregg’s workshop. Fairly recently, it has become more obvious to me that we need to continue our process of awakening and the more people who are able to take this sound and have this experience, the greater would be their sense of self and unification with all other beings and with the Divine. If you can make a sound and have a certain experience of feeling vibration with it, and somebody else can have the same experience of feeling the vibrations, you go "This is real - not based upon a belief system or pre-ordained spiritual path. It is not theoretical." The fact that it is created from vowel sounds, which are found in every language and tradition, makes it non-denominational. Vowel sounds are also considered sacred in so many different traditions, so they are trans-denominational—crossing all denominations.

Wisdom:

You write that along with the actual sound is another element—that of intent. Could you talk of that?

Jonathan:

In my first book, Healing Sounds, I developed a formula which is "Frequency + Intent = Healing". There is a corollary of that which is "Vocalization + Visualization = Manifestation." What we are talking about here is so important—that the effect of the sound is being very much influenced by intent—the consciousness that we put on the sound.

Wisdom:

So, the next logical question is about prayer; that when you put your intention into something...then that’s a prayer?

Jonathan:

Very much so. Let’s make the assumption that the intent is a positive one. The original concept of prayer means to commune with God, which is the purpose of The Divine Name.One of the focuses of prayer in the book is in resonance with what Gregg Braden said that the most effective form of prayer is not a petition, asking for something as though you are in need, but as an affirmation of appreciation for something as though it has already happened.

Wisdom:

Please talk about the bridging of the mainstream and metaphysical, science and spirituality that the book offers.

Jonathan:

I believe there is one Divine Creator Being that goes by different names. However, what’s extremely important about the Divine Name is that it can be shared universally by people of all different traditions and all different cultures and all different belief systems. It is quite amazing that this is the name that was given to Moses on Mt. Sinai when he encountered the Burning Bush. Yet, at the same time it’s important to understanding that the Divine Name does not simply belong to the Abrahamic traditions. After I wrote The Divine Name, I read a book by Osho who said that there are only two major religions on the planet; the Hebrew tradition and the Hindu tradition. I thought that was quite interesting because on one level, what I am trying to do with The Divine Name isblend the two. It is a universal name created solely through vowels. And it is also the name of the Creator being from the Abrahamic traditions. And at the same time, it works with the chakras, which come from the Hindu tradition. So it is truly universal. I really believe that if we can stop our attachment with a particular sound being related to a particular tradition, it would be wonderful. And of course, with vowel sounds, you can’t relate them to any one particular tradition or culture. When you make the sound of the Divine Name, you feel the energy going from the crown chakra all the way down to the base chakra and then back up again. This is something anyone who has read the book and worked with the interactive instructional CD that accompanies the book can experience. It’s interesting that the Divine Name is said to be the sound of spirit going into matter and then back into spirit. Once it’s experienced, this is something that becomes more than simply an intellectual concept—it becomes a reality and a truth for us regardless of our background or belief system. It’s quite magnificent. And it can not be association with any one tradition.

Wisdom:

Can the Divine Name be used for planetary evolution?

Jonathan:

Yes indeed. The Divine Name is divided into four sections. The first section talks about my discovery and revelation of the Divine Name and how I was able to validate it. As previously noted, the Divine Name is often called the Tetragrammaton and is composed of four letters that were Hebrew consonants. At first I thought that it was coincidental that when I vocalized this particular series of vowel sounds, that they should sound like the consonants of the Tetragrammaton. I thought: " How can you have vowels as consonants?" It didn’t make sense at all until much later when I started reading a book called Teach Yourself Biblical Hebrew and it turned out that in biblical times, there were consonants that were actually vowel sounds and amazingly, they were the letters that made up the Divine Name. When I intoned them as the vowels they were supposed to be, they were the sounds I created as the result of my dream. The second part of the book talks about sacred sound’s power, because once again, it is important that people understand that this is real, so we deal with the numerous subjects involving sound, including the physics of sound, the importance of intent and prayer and the power of sacred sound. The third part of the book is where you work with the interactive instructional CD, included with the book, and that is where you actually learn to intone the Divine Name. The fourth part of The Divine Name focuses on how we can use the Divine Name in global prayer, to interface and commune together. I talk about the power of the heart and the fact that when the heart is in a state of coherence, it is 5000 times more powerful than the electro-magnetic field of the brain. Prayer must be a heart-oriented experience. There have been these global meditations and sound healing events and they’ve been shown to be very effective. In the book, I present information about The Global Consciousness Project out of Princeton, NJ. They have discovered using random numbers generators spread throughout the world, that when events of great compassion occur, the numbers become less random; during times of great global coherence. They can then be graphed and charted. In the last chapter of The Divine Name, there’s a chart of the results of 2009 World Sound Healing Day and it’s quite impressive to see. There is another organization, the Global Coherence Initiative, that is working through Heart Math Institute. They are examining the relationship between the electromagnetic field of the human being and the electromagnetic field of the planet to determine if there is an interface that occurs through this. It appears that there is. Through the Global Consciousness Project and the Global Coherence Initiative, we can see that we are interconnected with the planet. And that our prayers and meditations can actually influence and affect the field of the planet. Now, there is a reason why most of the prayer on the planet is vocalized. Sound amplifies our prayers. Through positive intentionalized sound, we can create the miraculous. What would happen if you have a lot of people working together with positive heartfelt good intent while they are sounding the Divine Name? I think the potentials are limitless. Most of the turmoil created on this planet right now has been created by us and it can be fixed by us. All we have to do is release ourselves from the bondage of competition and get into compassion and cooperation. It’s that simple.I have been guided to manifest the world’s first interactive sacred sound temple called Temple of Sacred Sound www.templeofsacredsound.org It is free and available 24/7 for the benefit of the planet.

You can learn more about Jonathan’s work including a 9 day Healing Sounds Intensive, which he describes as "an extraordinary event creating light and love through sound", by going to www.healingsounds.com

For more information on The Divine Name, please visit www.thedivinename.com

Edie Weinstein is a Bliss Mistress, journalist, author and speaker whose first bestselling book in progress (at the moment) is called The Bliss Mistress Guide To Transforming The Ordinary Into The Extraordinary. www.liveinjoy.org